Today marks one year that I have been on this site, and I absolutely love it. It has its problems, but overall, it has been a blast. I took my lumps at first, while trying to figure out how this thing works, but with some veteran help and some great forum posts by ashamael and others, I think I have the hang of it. At least a bit. One thing I love about this site is how most veterans are more than happy to spread advice to anyone who needs it, and how for the most part, competitive owners get along. I love reading the league message boards and the forum posts and so today I thought I would just add my two cents about SimLeague basketball and my experiences.
First off, if you are new or somewhat new to the game, go and read the forum posts by ashamael on usage and winning in the sim. They are probably the two most important posts if you want to succeed. Also, his post on assist percentage is great and addresses a specific strategy that many owners, including myself, have found successful. Before I learned what usage was and how to successfully incorporate it, I had ran twelve teams. Ten had missed the playoffs and two had barely made it with sixth seeds. Once I understood usage and some other advanced statistics, I put together some pretty good teams, even having a stretch of 12 straight 60 game winners. At this point, I thought that I was one of the better owners in the sim and was more than ready for the theme leagues.
But man, was I wrong! My first four theme league teams didn't even make the playoffs and it took me eleven themes before I won my first championship. Some of the guys on this site can sure play, and I was finding that out. It's more than just putting in the time and looking at one or two important statistics. If I wanted to be successful, I found that I would have to be even more thorough than I initially thought. I started trying out new things, such as different defensive positioning and double teaming, with mixed results. I started looking into more advanced statistics instead of totals as much. And above all, I started making sure my usage was always what I wanted it to be.
I was also constantly tinkering with different concepts to build teams around. I started with a concept involving usage. I wanted to make sure I had position flexibility, but I also always would have at least 10 usage points with out going over by too much. I realized that regardless of which rookies I would receive, If I fixed who my center and point guard were going to be, and allowed everyone else to move around, I could essentially fix how much usage was on the court at all times. This lead to the first of many R. Kelly's Closet teams. Initially I just kind of made up different names for each of my teams, but I really liked this name so I stuck with it for all the teams of mine with this concept. R. Kelly's Closet always features '97 Karl Malone as my go to guy and '95 John Stockton as my second. Karl is the only player in the sim with usage percentage of over 32.5%, efg% of over 50%, dreb% of over 20% and ast% of over 15%. Plus his efg is actually over 55%. Stockton is the only guy in the sim with efg% over 60% and ast% over 40%. So I started my teams with Karl and John and built around them. After my first Closet team won 62 games, I tinkered with it repeatedly and now in 6 open league attempts, R. Kelly's Closet is 349-101. All five finished teams won their division and a bye, and three teams made the finals, with two winning it all. The sixth edition is currently 33-7.
Even though that team is my favorite concept, I am still tinkering with a bunch of others. This site is a blast and even though I have been somewhat successful, I am still out of my league a bit when facing owners like tadmand, ashamael, ajwilly2, gmgreen65 and others. I hope others like this site as much as I do and continue to play. I know I will be playing for years to come.